Bob Geldof to return Freedom of Dublin in protest against Aung San Suu Kyi

Bob Geldof has announced that he will return his Freedom of the City of Dublin in protest against Myanmar leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi, who is also a recipient of the honour.

Suu Kyi has faced widespread condemnation after she repeatedly failed to address allegations of ethnic cleansing against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims.

More than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh in an attempt to escape widespread violence.

Geldof has now announced that he will personally hand back the honour at Dublin’s City Hall, claiming that Suu Kyi’s association with the Irish capital “shames us all”.

“Her association with our city shames us all and we should have no truck with it, even by default. We honoured her, now she appalls and shames us”, the Live Aid founder said.

U2 have also spoken out

Geldof’s stand comes only two days after compatriots U2 urged Suu Kyi to take a stand against the violence.

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“For these atrocities against the Rohingya people to be happening on her watch blows our minds and breaks our hearts”, U2 said in a statement released on their official website.

“On behalf of our audience who campaigned so hard for her, we reached out several times to speak to Aung San Suu Kyi directly about the crisis in her country and the inhumanity being directed at the Rohingya people.

“We expected to speak to her this week, but it appears this call will now not happen. So we say to you now what we would have said to her: the violence and terror being visited on the Rohingya people are appalling atrocities and must stop. Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence is starting to look a lot like assent.

“As Martin Luther King said: ‘The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people’. The time has long passed for her to stand up and speak out.”